Yes, of course, I recognize that Professor Larissa Taylor has the right to express her despicable and calumnious views about St. Joan as she sees fit.

But it is also MY RIGHT to defend Saint Joan's holy name and reputation, as vigorously and as boldly as God gives me the ability to do so!

I also recognize that I am only a small minnow in the sea of Academia; but I cannot stand by and allow a CINO = "A Catholic in Name Only" to speak such scandalous lies against my good and dear friend, St. Joan, and get away with it.

And so with God's sword of righteous indignation in hand and with the inspiration of God, The Holy Spirit; this 'minnow' boldly confronts Professor Larissa Tylor's distortions!

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It was very difficult for me to write this response to Professor Taylor's 'You Tube' C-Span book presentation because I literally had to force myself to listen to her twisted and erroneous statements about La Pucelle's personality and life story, more times than I care to count!

Why would I put myself through such an ordeal? For the sole purpose of being able to create a word-for-word transcript of her talk; with which I would be able to point out and correct the errors and misunderstanding that occurred during her "You Tube" interview.

I am grateful to GOD that I have my own "Joan library" to refer to in my arguments against Professor Taylor's inaccurate analysis of Jeanne's personality and life story.

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When St. John of the Cross escaped his prison and found refuge in St. Teresa of Avila convent, the head of St. John's order came to St. Teresa and demanded that she hand St. John back into his custody.

The wise Saint looked around the room in which she was standing and said: "HE IS NOT HERE." By saying this she was being 'evasive' in her reply so the priest could take her statement any way that he wanted.

According to the teachings of the Catholic Church it is not a sin to be 'evasive' in one's answers.

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"How did Joan set about leaving Domremy without alerting her parents?"

At the bottom of page 31 of the highly respected French historian Regine Pernoud's book, JOAN OF ARC BY HERSELF AND HER WITNESSES, we find the following:

QUESTION: "When you left your father and your mother, did you think you were committing a sin?"

On page 32 we have her response to this question;

JOAN: "Since God commanded it, it had to be. (my emphasis - vf) Since God commanded it, had I a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers, had I been a King's daughter, I would have departed."

On page 33, we find Durand Laxart's account: "I went myself to fetch Joan at her father's home and I took her to my house..."

And she told me that she wanted to go to France, to the Dauphin, to have him crowned, saying, 'Has it not been said that France would be lost by a woman and shall there-after be restored by a virgin?"

ZZZ who is the woman? talk abt queen mother

JOAN: "I went to my uncle's and I told him that I wanted to stay with him for a time and there I stayed about eight days."

"And I then I told my uncle that I must go to the town of Vaucouleurs and my uncle took me there. And when I came to the town of Vaucouleurs I recognized Robert de Baudricourt, whereas never before had I seen him and by my Voice I knew this Robert, for the Voice told me that it was him."

So from this reference, we do know that Jehanne explained her reasons for her departure from Domremy. That she had no choice, in this matter because she had to accomplish the task that God, through the 'Voices,' of Saints Michael, Catherine and Margaret, gave her.

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If she had told her father and mother that she was leaving home to follow the guidance of her Heavenly Voices: to raise the siege of Orleans, and have the dauphin was crowned in the city of Reims; her parents would have undoubtedly thought she was crazy! The consequences of this belief would have caused them to beat her to a pulp, to lock her in their home's storage room and then force her into an unwanted marriage.

Joan was being evasive with her parents by not telling them the exact reason why she wanted to go to her Uncle Durand's home. But even so, she did tell them the truth, because she did stay with her Uncle Durand and his wife for EIGHT DAYS, before she told him that she wanted to go to speak with de Baudricourt.

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I find it very interesting that the 1930's 'agnostic, radical feminist thinker' like Sackville-West, did not question Joan's truthfulness yet the 'Catholic' Professor Taylor does!

Here is another statement made by Professor Taylor:

"Joan's brothers were tattling to her parents that she (Joan) was going off and talking to people of other towns."

What is the resource Taylor might offer to support THAT information? I have checked, Professor Regine Pernoud's biography as well as V. Sackville-West's and Mr. Paine's two volume work on St. Joan, and I found NOTHING that would support her statement.

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Professor Taylor misspoke when she said that Joan had three interviews with THE DUKE OF LORRAINE.

What really happened is that Jehanne had three interviews with Sir Robert de Baudricourt, who was the Captain of Vaucouleurs. Point of fact is that Jehanne was summoned to speak with the Duke of Lorraine; and this was ONLY ONE TIME!

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I listened to Professor Taylor's talk and I found that NONE of her comments say anything 'NEW' because her ideas have been well-covered by a large numbers of OTHER authors.

Case in point: In 1895, a Scotsman by the name of Andrew Lang wrote a bio on Jehanne. He came to the conclusion that La Pucelle's tremendous accomplishments were due to her "genius and strength of character", and that any supernatural motivations that she may have had only came from some manner of histrionic mental reality that allowed her to interpret these ideas from her subconscious mind into an objective reality, by accounting for them as being supernatural in origin."

The dictionary's definition of this word as follows: "Histrionic is often used to describe someone who is being overly dramatic. The noun form, 'histrionics', refers to actions, which are overly dramatic. Think, "hysterical."

Those conclusions are so VERY SIMILAR to what Taylor professes to be her own.

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Jehanne, La Pucelle, according the testimonies of all those who witnessed her behavior, never stated that they found her to be 'overly emotional' or 'histrionic.' She was never accused of being 'mentally unstable': not by her friends and more importantly, not by her enemies.

She was NOT egocentric, which means - "Thinking only of oneself, without regard for the feelings or desires of others; self-centered."

In fact the historic record proves that Jehanne was (and is) extremely different from the person that Professor Taylor portrays her to be.

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Here is another example of what I am trying to say:

In 1908, the author, Anatole France, wrote a book about Joan. Throughout the book he refused to admit of any supernatural phenomena in Joan's actions and behavior.

But he had the unmitigated nerve to call her an "unintelligent" girl who was used by people around her, namely Charles' advisers and priests, who had "stronger minds than Joan", for their own purposes and then she was discarded, to be done away with by the English."

He says he comes to his conclusions from the record of Joan's condemnation trial, where she was confused and inconsistent with her facts. (What Joan said doesn't seem confusing to me vf)

Does that not sound exactly like what Prof. Taylor states?

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Now let us look at another comment that the 'good' professor made about how Joan 'found' the sword of St. Catherine.

The professor stated that she followed Joan's journey from Vaucouleurs to Chinon stopping at several places along the way....

She says: "St. Catherine of Fierbois is where she (Joan) said that her famous sword would be found. And the only problem was that she stayed there and heard Mass several times.

"So when she sent for it from the court of Chinon, the future king asked her if it was there and she said NO. "

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What does V. Sackville-West have to say on this subject?

On page 144 the author states:

"She accepted the armour and the banners; the sword she declined, having ideas of her own. She knew exactly which sword she wanted, and would have none other. They must go and fetch it for her. They would find it, she said, buried in the ground behind the altar in the church of Saint Catherine at Fierbois. This puzzled everybody, for no one had ever heard of the existence of this sword, but such was their belief in Jeanne by now that an armourer was sent from Tours, with a letter from Jeanne addressed to the priests of Saint Catherine asking them to be good enough to find the sword and to send it. TO EVERYBODY'S ASTONISHMENT (vf emphasis) it all fell out as she had predicted. The sword was indeed there, engraved with five crosses; it was very rusty, but, as soon as the church people started to clean it, the rust fell off it without any difficulty. Here was a miracle indeed, and Jeanne's prestige increased a hundred fold. The church people at Fierbois were so much impressed that they gave her a sheath for the sword, and so did the people of Tours, so that she had two sheaths, one of crimson velvet and the other of cloth of gold, but she herself caused yet a third sheath to be made, of stout serviceable leather.

"The story is undoubtedly a strange one, even if we discount the miraculous disappearance of the rust, and is scarcely covered by the suggestion that she might have heard of the sword when she passed through Fierbois on her way to Chinon. For if Jeanne had been told about it by one of the church people at Fierbois, why had others not heard of it also; and why did she have to write to the church people, describing so exactly where it would be found?

All she need to have said was, "Please dig up the sword you told me about, and send it to me." Her own explanation, of course, was her usual one: her voices had told her where it lay. The skeptical suggestion that Jeanne had hidden the sword there herself may be dismissed: it in no way accords with anything that we know about her character. I confess that I fail to see how the story can rationally be explained. At any rate, Jeanne's contemporaries made no attempt to explain it rationally, and legends grew up around the sword, ...." _(My Emphasis = v.f.)

Professor Regine Pernoud in her bookJOAN OF ARC BY HERSELF AND HER WITNESSES on page 61, gives a very similar depiction of Joan's asking for the sword and it being found in the ground either before or behind the altar.

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I do not know where Professor Taylor got her information because it is NO WHERE TO BE FOUND in either Professor Pernoud's book: 'Joan of Arc, by herself and her witnesses' Sackville-West work "Saint Joan of Arc" or Mr. Paine's two volume work, "Joan of Arc: Maid of France!

Point of fact, Joan stated at her Rouen trial, that "it was buried in the ground either before or behind the main altar."

So my question to Professor Taylor is this: How could Joan have seen the sword of St. Catherine when it was BURIED IN THE GROUND

I think the main problem that Professor Taylor has is that she CANNOT tell the difference between Joan's great zeal to ACCOMPLISH the WILL OF GOD in her lifeand the fact that for Joan to accomplish her heavenly mandate she had to wage war against the enemies of France.

In medieval times there was the practice of asking, ONLY ONE TIME, for a peaceful settlement of the dispute.

If Joan LOVED war so much, why did she make THREE separate attempts to make peace with the English by BEGGING THEM to do what was right in the sight of God and peacefully leave France? Is this the behavior of a person who LOVED WAR?

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Professor Taylor goes on to say: "But she was determined to get away from home and that is one of my findings."

(I agree with this one thought - Joan was in fact very determined to begin the task that 'God' had given her.)

"To me I don't use the word easily because my students do and that is the word "awe." Awe that a teenage girl, even if she was helped by the court could do the things she did.

She really did fight. She had four major injuries. An arrow into her shoulder, one to the hip, she stepped on a spiked trap. And she fell off a ladder when the English threw stones at her head.

She made major leadership decisions.
How could a 17 to 19 year old girl do that? It could not happen today, to the same degree. So I think that she became more than the court planned her to be. But at the same time Joan was very much Joan, so when the court told her to shut up and go along with the truce her self confidence really comes through. And where she got that from I really don't know....but she showed that throughout.

And when I talked with one of the actresses who portrayed her, Lee Lee Sobieski, she said that 'since I was her age and I played the part, I think that it was just the confidence of youth. You know, like some one of my age, I would be very scared to get on a ski trail or something like that and go down it for the very first time. But Joan at seventeen seems to be not to be afraid of anything, I think she thought that she was invincible and that communicated itself to people around her.'

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She did not try to drag them to church all the time even though she suggested that they go to Mass before fighting.

The historical record clearly states that Joan's devout presence had a great influence on the Captains as well as the common soldier.

I offer as evidence to what I believe is the true historic record, a quote from Mr. Paine's two volume work JOAN OF ARC:MAID OF FRANCE, we find on page 131 the following account:

"It was the moral problem that she promptly took into hand. Brief observation of her captains and a glimpse or two of the army convinced her of the need of this, in the conduct of a holy war. Everywhere there was wild drinking, gambling, swearing. Mingled with the soldiers was a sprinkling of women of the sort known to all nations in all ages of warfare. Joan assembled her captains and told them that these things must end, not gradually, but all at once; the hard drinking and profanity must cease; the women must go; the men, also the captains, must say their prayers and go to Mass and confession, if they wished to march under the banner of Heaven.

Those battered chiefs must have been in despair, but it seems they agreed, at least to go to confession and to pray. La Hire, whose every other word had been an oath, promised to swear only by his baton, a form employed by Joan herself. La Hire also composed a prayer, the famous prayer of which, it is true, there is no certain history, but which established tradition has ascribed to him. It ran: "Oh, God, do with me as I would do by You, if You were La Hire and I were God."

(page 132) The effect of Joan's proposed reforms on the soldiers may be imagined. Few of them could have seen her on her arrival, the night before, and now when the tale of her requirements flew there would be a moment of consternation, then outbreaks of roaring derision. Those crime-soaked children of war could not believe their ears. Profanity was their mother tongue; women were their prerogative. As for going to confession, why in a month they could not even begin the story of their murders and violations.

But then their captains appeared, La Hire and the others, and riding among them, banner in hand a figure in white armour, straight from a church window, as it must have seemed to them, or from the gates of paradise. Ribaldry ceased and did not begin again when she had passed. That day and the next she rode among them. Joan had a natural bent for dramatic effect and, consciously or otherwise, often followed it.

Father Pasquerel provides a memory of Blois: "Having quit Tours to go to Orleans, we were at Blois two or three days, waiting for the provisions to be loaded on the boats. At Blois Joan told me to have made a banner around which she would assemble the priests, and to have painted on it the image of Christ crucified. The banner ready, Joan each day - once in the morning and once in the evening - had me convoke all the priests. These assembled, chanting anthems and hymns in honor of the Blessed Mother. Joan was with them. But she would not permit any of the soldiers to be there who had not confessed that day, and she (page 133) notified all to confess themselves and come to the reunion, seeing that all the priests there held themselves ready to hear all penitents of good will."

Father Pasquerel's staff of priests became very busy with confessions. The morning and evening prayer-meeting swelled to full attendance; the women were no longer seen. There is plenty of evidence for the new state of affairs. Pasquerel himself presents a picture of the start for Orleans that speaks volumes."

"The day we quitted Blois to go to Orleans, Joan had all the priests assembled. The banner at their head, they opened the march. The soldiers followed. The cortege left the city by the side of the Solonge (the country to the south of the Loire) chanting :Veni Creator Spiritus' and several other anthems."

Apart from the Crusades, no similar military spectacle had been know to history."

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(Professor Taylor continues) But it is a very different picture that you get from a lot of fiction and a lot of the films that have popularized her story and even her sainthood which I think has made her into a "don't mess with Joan" kind of figure. Which I found out a lot... people were not necessarily happy with my interpretation (

you got that right!V.f.) because I wanted to situate her firmly as a girl growing up in the fifteenth century and having this extraordinary thing happen to her 'because of her'(why did she put that phrase into her talk? What did the professor mean by this? Was the professor trying to hint that somehow Joan made all this up? It would be interesting to find out.)she continues: "and in the process to change the course of the Hundred Years' War and to change the idea of France.

But I think the larger theme is our view of women in history because I think that students come in and a lot of historians and non-historians repeat the idea that history is always progressive.

You know it started out with women with no rights and then suddenly we all have all rights. And we know that that is not true. But I think that one of the things that it really tells me is that history is a zigzag. That at times in history there was a place for very strong women, in this case a very strong teenage girl to operate and have a real strong affect on historical events. And so I think it is a good corrective to what we tend to assume about the Middle Ages.